You didn't mention if you were sitting behind a hardware firewall. Will cost you 50 bucks, but if you can buy XP, you can also afford:-) a Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, or whatever cable-router. Keep the firewall/router completely closed for external access and you should be fine. I've had unprotected Windows boxes behind a firewall running for years without a single virus. I'm not saying you should keep your systems unprotected (!!), but you should be fine during the time between installing and having your Anti-Virus software installed.
Am I the only one who doesn't think 40 bucks for 8 CDs is really cheap. I just bought for half that money FC2, Mandrake 10 and a third distro (Arch Linux) just for fun. In total 10 CDs for 22 bucks with free shipping. Sites like linuxcentral.com or osdisc.com usually charge 2-3 dollar per CD. So, especially since this a shootout deal, you would expect it to be a bargain. And it isn't. Of course downloading is even cheaper. YMMV, but when I can get a CD set in my mailbox for only a few dollars more than downloading and burning one myself, that has always had my preference.
That's how big companies (like mine) are applying wireless today. You build a WiFi network, leave it 100% open, but don't connect it to the LAN/Intranet. In our office we just got a separate DSL line for the WiFi network. When people in the office want to use WiFi, they just VPN from the public Internet into the corporate network. No WEP, no nothing, just relying on VPN. Just the same as when I connect to the office from home or from a hotel.
So all those journalists that go wardriving and then have a big article with "Company XYZ leaves it's network full open!" don't understand dime of how it works. Yes, the access point probably announces itself with "XYZ AP", but no, your are definitely not on the XYZ corporate network. And yes, with this scheme there are some free (as in beer) rides to the Internet up for grabs. But that loss in bandwidth is pretty little so far. They can bear the costs of that.
XP is sold more than any other operating system on earth.
Ehhh, "PC's are sold more than any other computer on earth". And you get XP with it, if you like (wipe:-) it or not. Of course there are exceptions for those buying a DIY whitebox.
Nope, Scheveningen, Netherlands, Europe, not Holland MI. The article didn't say how they made a distinction between copies of your own CD and downloaded music. Maybe it's simply "please come to the station tomorrow, show us the real CD and we withdraw the ticket". Which gives you the option of quickly going to the record store. But I don't know.
Just read about a night time search of cars in one of Holland's night-club districts, where the police searched for weapons (mainly knifes), drugs (mainly XTC) and last but not least they confiscated lots of illegally burnt CDs. It really surprised me that regular police was going after that. But I think it is a way more appropriate method to go after illegal music, then through these RIAA lawyer threats. And these people will probably just be ticketed and not extorted of 3000k in a "civil" (what a word, nothing civil about that) court of law.
These corporations [...] could threaten [...] the crap out of you for looking at them cock-eyed.
Isn't this the classic old business model, in the past it was just called "offering protection":-(. I don't see much difference, only that today's RIAA uses lawyers instead of hitman and that it is US government approved. And I doubt if that is even a difference.
Hope you just forgot your smiley, otherwise I take offence!! Which country is currently messing up the world!! And I'm even not a Canadian, just living and working there. GO FLAMES GO!!!:-)
Back to the topic, PayPal has always been made a big mess of splitting up US versus international customers. For a long time "internationals" had no verified addresses, etc. I've a long email exchange with their staff about that topic. But, they were very friendly and appologizing about that. I've seen it much worse. Anyway, maybe because of that, I'm pretty sure I never supplied them any social security number. Probably because they don't know we have that here in Canada as well, and fortunately so.
So, if you don't want to give them your social security number, move up north, and you're fine.:-)
After a few years, I can only say that I'm a happy PayPal customer, even used them today. But when I hear about having to provide confidential information to cancel your account, that horrifies me!!
OK, PayPal, take up the challenge. We/.-ers (among others) made you big, reply and comment seriously to this question. I'm sure Cmdr Taco will give you a fresh topic. Or otherwise "The Rgister" will make your anser an item.
Besides all the discussions about flying a 747 at very low speed and about the manouvrability at low altitude, what happens to the plane when in a few seconds it becomes 100 tons lighter? Don't know the ratio between the empty and full weight of the plane, but loosing weight that fast doesn't seem to be a situation when I would like to be a pilot. And definitely not one when you are low speed, low altitude.
That's what I always tell my friends here (Canada/US). In Holland (where I'm originally from, as is the poster), because of regulations and because it's all "brick and mortar" building, I was used to all cabling (electric, phone, etc) being put in PVC 3/4 - 1" conduits. Very flexible. So, I told friends who were building a house they should do that here to. It prevents you to make decisions on fiber versus cat-5 when your mind is still busy with tiles, bathtubs and the color of the paint. Anyway, I bought a house already finished. So I had to find my way through the return channel airducts to lay my CAT-5 from the study to the server room in the basement. Mmm, I pulled both utp and coax, but didn't do the fiber thing. Maybe in time I will pull my hairs out for that.:-) I can always use the coax to pull the fiber though.
Preferable... yes (maybe), but most international companies nowadays try to avoid spending 50-100k on relocating someone overseas. And I speak from personal experience in that sense, having worked for a multinational with 300,000 people.
Further, you will experience more of another country when you are working on local conditions for a local company, etc. The gossip at the expatriate club swimming pool is pretty horrible, I can tell you.
But yes, it's not the easiest way, but definitely the most rewarding. And you can make your own decisions. If you buy your own ticket, you can decide the destination. If you boss buys it, mmmm.......
"I'm just curious; how'd you manage to get all these different jobs?"
OK, my list is not as long as the "grandparent's" one, but I lived and worked for 4 years or more in Holland, Singapore and Canada. How to do that, you ask? Simple: resign from your job, sell/throw away half your stuff, buy a plane ticket and there you are, on the airport of an unknown city with no job, no house, no friends, just two suitcases.
I'm not joking here. It is that simple, it is that hard!! Next step is to write application letters to every recruitment agent you can find in the phonebook, accept any job you can get and later move on to the job you really want. Of course you can try to have a big multinational send you around the globe as an expetriate, but otherwise, just go, have a very hard time the first 6 months and get the reward after that.
It's simply a matter of choosing between "minimizing risk" or "maximizing experience". Or as we always like to quote Nike: JDI!!!
All it takes is one informant for the police to get warrents to search all his friends and known acquaintances computers....
Mmmm, not so sure about that. Many of his friends are in his addressbook probably listed as "32ggy99", "bigbuster" or whatever. Given the use of mainly IRC for communication, chances are that this suspect is completely in the blue who his buddies are.
Even the Estonian government has gone hi-tech. Cabinet ministers meet weekly in a room fitted with more than a dozen high-end computers, complete with flat screen monitors and broadband connections.
Ahhh, so when the meeting gets boring, they can surf the web and check their/. karma.:-)
Nearly all my systems are Linux based or updated with the latest patches from Redmond. But I have here one box running Windows 95, daily used for email and browsing, behind a firewall that's as locked down as possible. On the other hand, the last security update or virus definition download happened at least three years ago. And yes, the common sense topic also applies, because I've trained my wife (the main user of that box) from day one to mistrust any attachment.
So, this box, without being updated, has over the years always been virus free. And probably its chances are getting better by the day, because who is writing virusses for Win95, or IE4 or even WordPad....
Colleage of mine is already working a week to install XP on a new notebook. While connected to the net (only sw firewall, no hw router) to get the Windows Updates, she got hit already. Of course I told here she was stupid not to buy a firewall box first, but oh well, who listens to me:).
Conclusion: get that firewall and use common sense!!
"compared to an iPod it's big, ugly, extremely heavy, poorly engineered"
How can you say that when it becomes more and more clear that probably all Mini-iPods need a recall because of the connector between the main PCB and the one with the headphone jack. Expected lifetime is currently 6 weeks for a mini iPod. Talking about good engineering.....
Most people in this discussion focus on the headphone plug, but as that guy who ripped apart his mini iPod states: the problem is the connector(s) between the two PCB's that's at fault. That connector should have been flexible or the case should have been rigid. Both not being the case, the soldering points of the connector start to crack.
I can't see a mass market for systems that can run Sun's Star Office suite and damn little else.
If a system is powerful enough to run StarOffice (or OpenOffice) then it can certainly run Mozilla and Evolution on the side. So, with that trio I'm 100% sure that you cover 90% of "aunt Willie's" needs. Don't tell me that more than 10% of the population is doing more than browsing the web (oops, browsing p0rn), using email to send grandma snapshots of the newly born worm, and, and, and, and.... I think they even will not touch a word processor or spreadsheet. Probably a tax program is more crucial than an Office suite. Anyway, I'm very sure that a low-end offering which is cheaper because of no MS tax will be sufficient for the majority of this society.
These days Oracle is pitching clusters of low-cost Linux PCs
You probably didn't see Oracle's recent anouncement that they consolidated their internal 70+ node ERP implementation onto a cluster of three Sun F12k's running 9i RAC on top of Sun Cluster. And by doing that they saved according to the statement 2 billion dollars.
I love Linux and I know how it can save money big time, but for certain large systems a couple of Dell servers running Redhat just doesn't cut it yet.
So, maybe there is a difference between pitching and doing....
As a colleague noticed very quickly: "Why is MS publishing this document as a PDF, while all the other stuff on their site are.doc's"? Answer: look at the properties and you will see that this document was created on a Mac with Quark-XPress. Mmmm, that's probably because MS-Office doesn't have a native.PDF export, like StarOffice has:-).
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You didn't mention if you were sitting behind a hardware firewall. Will cost you 50 bucks, but if you can buy XP, you can also afford :-) a Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, or whatever cable-router.
Keep the firewall/router completely closed for external access and you should be fine. I've had unprotected Windows boxes behind a firewall running for years without a single virus.
I'm not saying you should keep your systems unprotected (!!), but you should be fine during the time between installing and having your Anti-Virus software installed.
Am I the only one who doesn't think 40 bucks for 8 CDs is really cheap. I just bought for half that money FC2, Mandrake 10 and a third distro (Arch Linux) just for fun. In total 10 CDs for 22 bucks with free shipping. Sites like linuxcentral.com or osdisc.com usually charge 2-3 dollar per CD. So, especially since this a shootout deal, you would expect it to be a bargain. And it isn't.
Of course downloading is even cheaper. YMMV, but when I can get a CD set in my mailbox for only a few dollars more than downloading and burning one myself, that has always had my preference.
That's how big companies (like mine) are applying wireless today. You build a WiFi network, leave it 100% open, but don't connect it to the LAN/Intranet. In our office we just got a separate DSL line for the WiFi network. When people in the office want to use WiFi, they just VPN from the public Internet into the corporate network. No WEP, no nothing, just relying on VPN. Just the same as when I connect to the office from home or from a hotel.
So all those journalists that go wardriving and then have a big article with "Company XYZ leaves it's network full open!" don't understand dime of how it works. Yes, the access point probably announces itself with "XYZ AP", but no, your are definitely not on the XYZ corporate network. And yes, with this scheme there are some free (as in beer) rides to the Internet up for grabs. But that loss in bandwidth is pretty little so far. They can bear the costs of that.
XP is sold more than any other operating system on earth.
:-) it or not. Of course there are exceptions for those buying a DIY whitebox.
Ehhh, "PC's are sold more than any other computer on earth". And you get XP with it, if you like (wipe
Nope, Scheveningen, Netherlands, Europe, not Holland MI. The article didn't say how they made a distinction between copies of your own CD and downloaded music. Maybe it's simply "please come to the station tomorrow, show us the real CD and we withdraw the ticket". Which gives you the option of quickly going to the record store. But I don't know.
Just read about a night time search of cars in one of Holland's night-club districts, where the police searched for weapons (mainly knifes), drugs (mainly XTC) and last but not least they confiscated lots of illegally burnt CDs. It really surprised me that regular police was going after that. But I think it is a way more appropriate method to go after illegal music, then through these RIAA lawyer threats. And these people will probably just be ticketed and not extorted of 3000k in a "civil" (what a word, nothing civil about that) court of law.
These corporations [...] could threaten [...] the crap out of you for looking at them cock-eyed.
:-(. I don't see much difference, only that today's RIAA uses lawyers instead of hitman and that it is US government approved. And I doubt if that is even a difference.
Isn't this the classic old business model, in the past it was just called "offering protection"
That niece probably learned her first math from this book....
So, why doesn't she want a piece of the pie of www.googol.com? Because that pie is to small maybe?????
Must be Canada. They're always causing trouble.
:-)
:-)
/.-ers (among others) made you big, reply and comment seriously to this question. I'm sure Cmdr Taco will give you a fresh topic. Or otherwise "The Rgister" will make your anser an item.
Hope you just forgot your smiley, otherwise I take offence!! Which country is currently messing up the world!! And I'm even not a Canadian, just living and working there. GO FLAMES GO!!!
Back to the topic, PayPal has always been made a big mess of splitting up US versus international customers. For a long time "internationals" had no verified addresses, etc. I've a long email exchange with their staff about that topic. But, they were very friendly and appologizing about that. I've seen it much worse. Anyway, maybe because of that, I'm pretty sure I never supplied them any social security number. Probably because they don't know we have that here in Canada as well, and fortunately so.
So, if you don't want to give them your social security number, move up north, and you're fine.
After a few years, I can only say that I'm a happy PayPal customer, even used them today. But when I hear about having to provide confidential information to cancel your account, that horrifies me!!
OK, PayPal, take up the challenge. We
Besides all the discussions about flying a 747 at very low speed and about the manouvrability at low altitude, what happens to the plane when in a few seconds it becomes 100 tons lighter? Don't know the ratio between the empty and full weight of the plane, but loosing weight that fast doesn't seem to be a situation when I would like to be a pilot. And definitely not one when you are low speed, low altitude.
That's what I always tell my friends here (Canada/US). In Holland (where I'm originally from, as is the poster), because of regulations and because it's all "brick and mortar" building, I was used to all cabling (electric, phone, etc) being put in PVC 3/4 - 1" conduits. Very flexible. So, I told friends who were building a house they should do that here to. It prevents you to make decisions on fiber versus cat-5 when your mind is still busy with tiles, bathtubs and the color of the paint. Anyway, I bought a house already finished. So I had to find my way through the return channel airducts to lay my CAT-5 from the study to the server room in the basement. Mmm, I pulled both utp and coax, but didn't do the fiber thing. Maybe in time I will pull my hairs out for that. :-) I can always use the coax to pull the fiber though.
Preferable ... yes (maybe), but most international companies nowadays try to avoid spending 50-100k on relocating someone overseas. And I speak from personal experience in that sense, having worked for a multinational with 300,000 people.
Further, you will experience more of another country when you are working on local conditions for a local company, etc. The gossip at the expatriate club swimming pool is pretty horrible, I can tell you.
But yes, it's not the easiest way, but definitely the most rewarding. And you can make your own decisions. If you buy your own ticket, you can decide the destination. If you boss buys it, mmmm.......
"I'm just curious; how'd you manage to get all these different jobs?"
OK, my list is not as long as the "grandparent's" one, but I lived and worked for 4 years or more in Holland, Singapore and Canada. How to do that, you ask? Simple: resign from your job, sell/throw away half your stuff, buy a plane ticket and there you are, on the airport of an unknown city with no job, no house, no friends, just two suitcases.
I'm not joking here. It is that simple, it is that hard!! Next step is to write application letters to every recruitment agent you can find in the phonebook, accept any job you can get and later move on to the job you really want. Of course you can try to have a big multinational send you around the globe as an expetriate, but otherwise, just go, have a very hard time the first 6 months and get the reward after that.
It's simply a matter of choosing between "minimizing risk" or "maximizing experience". Or as we always like to quote Nike: JDI!!!
All it takes is one informant for the police to get warrents to search all his friends and known acquaintances computers....
Mmmm, not so sure about that. Many of his friends are in his addressbook probably listed as "32ggy99", "bigbuster" or whatever. Given the use of mainly IRC for communication, chances are that this suspect is completely in the blue who his buddies are.
Even the Estonian government has gone hi-tech. Cabinet ministers meet weekly in a room fitted with more than a dozen high-end computers, complete with flat screen monitors and broadband connections.
/. karma. :-)
Ahhh, so when the meeting gets boring, they can surf the web and check their
Pick two out of three :-).
:).
Nearly all my systems are Linux based or updated with the latest patches from Redmond. But I have here one box running Windows 95, daily used for email and browsing, behind a firewall that's as locked down as possible. On the other hand, the last security update or virus definition download happened at least three years ago. And yes, the common sense topic also applies, because I've trained my wife (the main user of that box) from day one to mistrust any attachment.
So, this box, without being updated, has over the years always been virus free. And probably its chances are getting better by the day, because who is writing virusses for Win95, or IE4 or even WordPad....
Colleage of mine is already working a week to install XP on a new notebook. While connected to the net (only sw firewall, no hw router) to get the Windows Updates, she got hit already. Of course I told here she was stupid not to buy a firewall box first, but oh well, who listens to me
Conclusion: get that firewall and use common sense!!
If you go to www.google.fr and search for AXA, no ads show up (anymore). So it looks like Google pulled the AdWord already. Do they feel guilty then?
And don't be bothered if someone else takes it out for a spin one day.
:-)
Like those T-shirts with the slogan "your Windows PC is my other computer"...
"compared to an iPod it's big, ugly, extremely heavy, poorly engineered"
How can you say that when it becomes more and more clear that probably all Mini-iPods need a recall because of the connector between the main PCB and the one with the headphone jack. Expected lifetime is currently 6 weeks for a mini iPod. Talking about good engineering.....
Oh my god, the duck in the pond has no WiFi...... we have to deduct points naturally :-)
Most people in this discussion focus on the headphone plug, but as that guy who ripped apart his mini iPod states: the problem is the connector(s) between the two PCB's that's at fault. That connector should have been flexible or the case should have been rigid. Both not being the case, the soldering points of the connector start to crack.
I can't see a mass market for systems that can run Sun's Star Office suite and damn little else.
.... I think they even will not touch a word processor or spreadsheet. Probably a tax program is more crucial than an Office suite. Anyway, I'm very sure that a low-end offering which is cheaper because of no MS tax will be sufficient for the majority of this society.
If a system is powerful enough to run StarOffice (or OpenOffice) then it can certainly run Mozilla and Evolution on the side. So, with that trio I'm 100% sure that you cover 90% of "aunt Willie's" needs. Don't tell me that more than 10% of the population is doing more than browsing the web (oops, browsing p0rn), using email to send grandma snapshots of the newly born worm, and, and, and, and
These days Oracle is pitching clusters of low-cost Linux PCs
You probably didn't see Oracle's recent anouncement that they consolidated their internal 70+ node ERP implementation onto a cluster of three Sun F12k's running 9i RAC on top of Sun Cluster. And by doing that they saved according to the statement 2 billion dollars.
I love Linux and I know how it can save money big time, but for certain large systems a couple of Dell servers running Redhat just doesn't cut it yet.
So, maybe there is a difference between pitching and doing....
As a colleague noticed very quickly: "Why is MS publishing this document as a PDF, while all the other stuff on their site are .doc's"? Answer: look at the properties and you will see that this document was created on a Mac with Quark-XPress. Mmmm, that's probably because MS-Office doesn't have a native .PDF export, like StarOffice has :-).
Also Sun's "Java Desktop System" is built on top of SuSE. Sun is still using RedHat for Linux servers.